But some European officials told The Wall Street Journal that approval for any acquisition deals might be more difficult to obtain given the current climate. AT&T would have to agree to follow European privacy laws, which would prevent it from providing customer data to the NSA and other US government agencies.

"Telecommunications companies that operate on German soil must hold themselves to German law," a spokeswoman for Germany's Economics Ministry told the Journal. "To transfer data to foreign intelligence agencies would be illegal."

"One would need to create transparency ahead of time so that everyone knows what the legal basis is" for how AT&T treats German data, Peter Schaar, Germany's federal commissioner for data protection, told the Journal. "The public and the regulators have become much more attentive now that we know, and also in part suspect, how far the surveillance goes."

About the author

Journalist, software trainer, and Web developer Lance Whitney writes columns and reviews for CNET, Computer Shopper, Microsoft TechNet, and other technology sites. His first book, "Windows 8 Five Minutes at a Time," was published by Wiley & Sons in November 2012.
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